Elif Balkas

Chief Technology Officer, Wolfspeed

Search every verified Elif Balkas interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a recent appearance on *Power Electronics News*' Power Corner, Wolfspeed CTO Elif Balkas discussed the company's 300-millimeter silicon carbide (SiC) technology and its applications for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure. Balkas stated that the company leveraged decades of crystal growth expertise to scale SiC wafer diameter to 300 mm, driven by industry demand for CMOS-compatible substrates and next-generation co-packaging architectures. She noted that silicon carbide offers thermal conductivity close to 500 W/mK, compared to silicon's 130 W/mK, and said that inserting a SiC layer into a simple architecture can provide a 10 to 15% improvement in heat removal efficiency. Balkas also said that compared to silicon IGBT-based systems, SiC offers a 30% system cost reduction, three times the power density improvement, and around 99% conversion efficiency. Balkas described Wolfspeed's collaboration with foundries and OSATs, including TSMC's CoWoS, to integrate hybrid silicon carbide-silicon packaging into established processor packages. She characterized the company's core competency as spanning materials, processing, devices, and advanced packaging. Balkas also discussed the potential for SiC in photonics and quantum computing, describing those applications as "sci-fi a little bit" but expressing confidence that such technologies would be realized.